David beats Goliath
People who read my articles will know that I am not happy with fellow fanciers who enter masses of birds each race.
But I do not have anything against these people, on the contrary, my best friends are such so called mob fliers.
And most of them have good birds as well.
What I have against racing with many birds is that such people often get publicity that they do not deserve, their results mislead fellow sportsmen and they discourage new-comers in this sport, especially young ones.
It may even be reason for fanciers to quit, since they think racing with say 10 pigeons against fellow sportsmen who enter 200 birds is just unfair.
What must the common man with his little salary, a little yard, little lofts, little time and few birds think when, while basketing, they have to queue up behind a man who together with a loft manager is unloading his truck with say 200 birds?
NORMALLY
Normally most of us breed some good birds, some which are acceptable, some that are average and many bad or very bad birds.
Naturally good fanciers will breed more good birds than others.
To show what I mean I will compare 2 fanciers.
- David who has 16 racers.
- Goliath who has 160 racers.
DAVID
Suppose 50% of the birds that David breeds are good; that means 8 good racers and 8 bad ones from 16 total.
Suppose the birds of Goliath are far less good and he breeds 15% good birds and 85% bad birds.
That means 24 good birds from 160 racers and 136 bad ones.
Now suppose there is a race in which all the good ones win a prize and the bad ones do not.
Then Davids name will be in the result sheet 8 times, while Goliaths name will be mentioned 24 times.
Goliaths result looks much better but in fact that of David was by far the best.
From David only 8 birds did NOT win a prize, from Goliath 136 birds failed.
That is an enormous difference.
PRESS
A report in a Belgian pigeon magazine on a National race inspired me to write this article.
In the report the names were mentioned of the fanciers that performed well:
It said something like this:
The following fanciers were outstanding in this race.
- Jansen (24 prizes from 40 birds).
- Brown (45 prizes from 73 birds).
- Smit (73 prizes from 138 birds).
These guys did not do bad indeed but what do you think of:
- Peters (4 prizes from 4 birds).
- Lawson (3 prizes from 3 birds).
- Adam (5 prizes from 5 birds).
They all had a score of 100%, none of their birds failed.
But nowhere in the report their names were mentioned.
Smits result however was said to be outstanding (he won 73 prizes) while 65 birds of his failed to be in time.
The sad thing is that the man who wrote the report did not mean bad, he did not want to push the mob fliers but unconsciously he gave his readers a wrong impression about the result of the race which was very frustrating for people like Peters, Lawson and Adam.
(Since I do not want to embarrass people the names I mentioned are fake).